


come out and level up

by thisstableground



Series: less than ninety degrees [6]
Category: Do No Harm (TV)
Genre: Birthday, Character Study, Developing Relationship, Fluff and Smut, Friends to Lovers, Morning After, Morning Cuddles, Morning Sex, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 14:50:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21181235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisstableground/pseuds/thisstableground
Summary: Okay, yes, so Vanessa and Usnavi kissed Ruben, and then they all had sex, and now they're cuddling in bed, but like, do theylikehim?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Direct continuation of Your Body Is A Triangle.
> 
> Chapter one: morning-after cuddling.  
Chapter two: morning-after smut and Important Conversation.  
Chapter three: It’s Ruben’s birthday and this year he got himself an honest-to-god real relationship.

The first thing Ruben notices when he wakes up is that he’s naked, and that he’s not alone. He barely has time to tense up before Usnavi and Vanessa are both talking to him, quietly reassuring him that it’s just them and he’s in Usnavi’s apartment and he’s safe.  
  
Okay. Oh, shit, okay, _last night_. His head is on Usnavi’s chest, Vanessa is curled around him at the back. Ruben’s never even stayed at someone else’s place like this, what’s the etiquette on waking up in bed with a _couple_ you just fucked?  
  
He opens his eyes.  
  
“Hey there,” says Usnavi.  
  
“Hi,” says Ruben, blinking hard to clear the morning tiredness away. “Hey, Vanessa.”  
  
“Aite, Ruben,” she says. They don’t seem in a hurry to get rid of him. In fact, Vanessa’s kissing the back of his neck and Usnavi is brushing light fingers across his lips, barely touching. Maybe last night really _wasn’t_ a one time thing. Ruben has no problem with that.  
  
The blinds are down but the light creeping through is far brighter than the dim pre-sunrise it usually is when he gets up. He shifts round to try and see the clock. Now free from Ruben's sleeping weight, Usnavi pushes himself up to sit, cracking his shoulder with a groan and wiggling his fingers to get feeling back into the arm Ruben was lying on.   
  
“Usnavi, it’s eight AM, you should be at work!" Ruben gasps. "Why didn’t you wake me up?”  
  
“I’m taking the morning off. Called in Sonny to let him know he’ll be opening, he’s on shift at eight thirty.”  
  
“Really? But you never open the store late.”  
  
“You just looked. Happy,” Usnavi says. “Didn’t wanna disturb you.”  
  
_He’s so _**_cute_**, Ruben thinks helplessly. It’s almost unbearable. “I can go, if you needed to - ah!” He sits up properly, then immediately lies back down again. “Nope, nope. Scratch that, not going anywhere. _Ow."_  
  
“Aw, poor baby,” coos Vanessa. “Did you work too hard last night?”  
  
“My everything hurts,” he says, cheerfully melodramatic.  
  
“Yeah, what else is new?” says Usnavi, stroking Ruben’s hair with a worried look. “I didn’t like…actually hurt you, did I? I tried to be careful.”  
  
“No, no, it’s the good kind,” assures Ruben. “Like, post-gym kind of hurt. Probably. I’ve only been in a gym once for like ten minutes, but I’ve heard stories.”  
  
“Who goes to a gym for ten minutes? Were you lost?”  
  
“There were mirrors _everywhere_. Ten minutes is my limit on how long I can stand to look at my reflection on a treadmill, turns out. Who ever wanted to know what they look like while they’re running? Still paid membership for the next seven months, though.” He stretches out blissfully then rolls over to rest his head on Usnavi’s thigh. “Coffee would be great, thanks.”  
  
“I didn’t offer.”  
  
“I’m reading between the lines,” Ruben says. “Vanessa wants coffee too.”  
  
“Oh, Vanessa really does,” she agrees. “Thanks, Usnavi!”  
  
_“Thanks Usnavi _nothin’, I wanna stay in bed as well! Why doesn’t Vanessa get the coffee?”  
  
“Because nobody wants that to happen,” says Vanessa.  
  
“Fair enough. Why doesn’t _Ruben_ get the coffee?”  
  
“Because Ruben can’t stand up,” says Ruben, looking up at Usnavi as pathetically as possible. “You broke me by being too good at sex. Anyway, what’s even the point of café if you’re not the one making it?”  
  
“Flattery gets you everywhere,” says Usnavi. “You’re gonna be a problem, I can tell. Already learning all my weaknesses.”  
  
“Usnavi’s weaknesses: number one, compliments about his coffee, number two, compliments about his dick,” Vanessa lists, tapping the appropriate number of fingers against Ruben’s shoulder as she does. “In that order. Three, videos of animals being friends with each other. Sometimes he cries at them, it’s adorable.”  
  
“Vanessa, don’t _tell_ him that! Whose side are you on?”  
  
“Found out some interesting ones last night, too,” says Ruben. “Like…four, Ruben talking about touching himself?”  
  
Usnavi makes a strangled noise and turns bright red. “_Dude_.”  
  
“Am I wrong?” Ruben asks in a low voice, skimming a hand high up the inside of Usnavi’s thigh.  
  
Usnavi closes his eyes and lets his head tip back to rest against the wall. “Mm. No.”  
  
Ruben pulls his hand away and huddles further back into Vanessa’s arms with an exaggerated yawn. “We could explore that if only I weren’t so tired and caffeine deprived. Such a shame.”  
  
Usnavi knocks the lamp over in his hurry to get out of bed.  
  
“I think we’ve made him dangerous, Usnavi,” says Vanessa. “I _like_ it.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: NSFW, smut.

“Fuckin’ finally,” Vanessa says as Usnavi hurries out the room still totally naked. “He woke me up like an hour ago just to entertain him ‘cause he was too hype to get back to sleep but he didn’t wanna move you. It was hell. He’s lucky I like him so much, for some godforsaken reason.”

Ruben bites his lip. “Sorry. Can’t help but feel like that was partially my fault.”

“It’s completely your fault,” she corrects. “You’re lucky I like you too.”

She yawns, and rests her head on her arm, looking at him. She has the cutest nose Ruben’s ever seen. He wants to kiss it. Warily, because he doesn’t know what he’s really allowed to do or if there’s some rule where a girl can finger-bang a guy who just ate her out and that’s all thoroughly casual but nose-booping is crossing a line of intimacy, he gives in to the urge.

Vanessa smiles drowsily at him and says, “ain’t you sweet?”

“Hynanrhgh,” Ruben says: Vanessa is _extremely _hot and she said a nice thing at him, he is powerless against that kind of attack.

Things stay quiet until a growing-louder beatboxed drumroll rises as Usnavi comes back, announcing himself outside the room: “señores y señoritas, he’s back, the one, the only —“ he kicks the door open, nearly spilling all three coffees on the tray he’s holding but saving it at the last second “—yo, it’s Usnavi.”

He sets the tray down on the beside table, falls back into bed with an unnecessarily disruptive amount of bounce, then big-spoons around Ruben with his chin on Ruben’s shoulder to peek at Vanessa and say “hey girrrl, it’s me, coffee boyfriend.”

Vanessa starts laughing. “Holy shit. When you’re both right next to each other like that, it’s like…making a Sims character, you know, with the sliders? Like I started off with the same guy but do I want him to be twink, or cub?” She closes first one eye then the other so she alternates which one of them she's looking at. “Twink, cub. Twink, cub. Tw--"

“I ain’t a twink,” Usnavi says. He wriggles his arm free so that he can flex at them. “I am gruff and strong!”

“_Aww_,” Ruben says.

“Honey,” Vanessa says, patting Usnavi’s bicep condescendingly.

Usnavi flops his arm down over both of them in protest. “To hell with both of yous, I ain’t talking to you no more if that’s how you’re gonna be.”

“Good,” Vanessa says. “That was the plan this whole time.”

The silence that follows is close and peaceful. Ruben’s never really thought until now about how it can be to just touch someone, the way a leg can press against yours incidentally, the way a hand can feel casually dropped on you, the warmth of life on either side of you. Nice is such a small word for it but nice is what it is. It’s nothing complicated and twisting and brutal, no guilt-wrenched desire, no secret shame about the content of his thoughts. Right now his only thoughts are _coffee :) _and _Usnavi :) _and _Vanessa :) _and even a very quiet and tentative _Ruben :)?, _in comforting pastel colors like a cartoon for kindergarteners. It feels like he’ll never feel bad again, because how will he ever have space to think about anything other than every second of what happened since Usnavi kissed him last night?

That’s so crazy. It’s so crazy how that actually happened.

He says out loud, “you kissed me last night.”

“Yeah, there was some other stuff too,” Vanessa says. “Keep up, Ruben.”

“It was nice,” he says.

“I’ll do it again,” Usnavi says, shaking a fist at him. “Don’t think I won’t.”

“Prove it.”

“I will!” Usnavi messily launches himself at Ruben’s face and attaches like a leech, then quickly sinks into something sweet and deep and real. Ruben thinks about all the things their mouths were doing last night and quietly tries not to die about it. His brain makes notes like observing the conditions in a test environment: soft, check. Scratchy, check, Usnavi’s definitely gonna leave him with stubble-rash all round his mouth but it’s worth it. Tongue, very much check. Awesome, _check_. Vanessa, not check, even when she leans in and Usnavi reaches across Ruben to pull her even closer**.**

“Oh, I was actually just tryna get my coffee,” she says. Usnavi breaks the kiss to grin at her, pets Ruben’s beard and sits up so he can hand the mugs out.

“Caffeine now, makeouts later, then,” he says. “Vanessa con leche, Ruben sin leche, my two little cinnamon buddies.”

“Better than kissing anyway,” Ruben says. He’s kidding, but then he takes a sip and maybe it’s the fact he’s drinking it out of a real mug instead of the bodega's paper ones, or maybe just the whole context is making everything elevated, but it might be the best thing he's ever tasted. He sighs, loudly and blissfully. “Jesus _Christ_, Usnavi, you’re fucking magical.”

“Oh, it’s nice to be appreciated for once,” Usnavi says, poking Vanessa, who slaps his hand then lifts the sheets and ducks her head under them. “The hell you doin’, you weirdo?”

Vanessa re-emerges, her hair ruffled up. “Checking to see if Ruben’s poppin’ a coffee boner. That was an R-rated moan right there.”

Ruben blushes and tugs the sheets more securely over himself. “It was a _sigh_, not a moan. And I’m not. Y’know. Doing that.”

“Is he, though, Vanessa?” Usnavi asks, and seems genuinely disappointed when she shakes her head. “Aww, bummer. Ruben, tell your junk to join the party, your brand new bisexual over here’s got lost time to make up for.”

“Maybe later,” Ruben says. “Caffeine first, we all agreed."

“Oh, bueno, bueno,” Usnavi says, taking a long drink from his own mug then hooking his leg ever-so-casually over Ruben’s, sliding his foot gently up then down Ruben’s calf. “Soy paciente.”

Ruben is stronger than this. “You’re _distracting_."

“Lo se.”

“Let him alone, Usnavi,” Vanessa says, then _instantly_ betrays Ruben by laying her hand just under his navel, scritching her fingers lightly. Ruben gives a startled cheeping noise like a baby bird and then looks very closely into his drink hoping that if he can’t see them that means they can’t give him shit for it.

“I am very busy right now,” he says into his mug. He gets two thirds of the way through with Usnavi’s thigh against his and Vanessa’s hand on his belly and an insistently stirring interest somewhere in between those two places before his willpower caves in. “Okay, alright, caffeine over.”

“Alriiight,” Usnavi says, taking Ruben and Vanessa’s empty mugs to put down, then sitting up eagerly in a cross-legged position that looks more like he’s waiting for them to tell him a story than anything else. "Ruben to the stage, can we get Ruben Marcado to the stage, please."

“Show us what you got, babe,” Vanessa says, a spark in her voice like the flint on a lighter. If Ruben's taking stage then he feels like he’s been shoved out here before he’s even had time to read the script. He’s both far too knowledgeable and far too inexperienced to know whether he knows what she’s hinting at, other than maybe their conversation earlier. Lying back against the pillows with his eyes closed in faint embarrassment, he hopes he guessed right, and takes his own semi-hard dick in hand, with a few nervous slow strokes. Vanessa's fingers work their way into his hair and she kisses lightly at his jaw.

“_Shit_, yeah,” Usnavi says. The bed shifts and then Usnavi’s left arm brushes against Ruben’s right, idly rhythmic as he joins in. “That’s a real good look on you, my dude.”

They like what they see and that's a fucking insane thing, but the thing in Ruben's heart that leaps at the idea of being wanted, being desired, instantly responds in an overdrive, fast pulse rushing through his whole body, and he moves his hand with more certainty or more need or just more, in general, than he ever really knew was possible. 

Vanessa presses into Ruben’s side, mouth to his shoulder and her breasts against him - holy crap, open your eyes and reality check for a fucking moment, Marcado: he’s spent all night _naked_ with this woman, and just _look_ at her. She’s gorgeous and clothesless and utterly fearless in herself, sucking her index and middle finger as she meets his stare. There’s a look on her face like she’s laughing inside at what is probably a sudden and violently vacant expression on Ruben’s, and then takes her fingers out her mouth and pushes them both inside herself, eye contact unbroken. Usnavi whispers several creative swear words, his arm moving faster next to Ruben’s so that Ruben instinctively matches the speed. Vanessa’s breath is loud and unsteady very close to his ear, the dark strands of her long hair fanned and lightly tangled over his chest.

_Here we are, just me and a friend and another friend all jerking off together on a Sunday morning,_ Ruben thinks. Somehow even his internal monologue manages to sound shrill, ringing with a happy kind of panic. Surely he should be jaded to something as simple as this: Ruben’s imagined plenty of things in his time, from mildly kinky to the kind of shit he should probably either tell a therapist or never say out loud to another human ever, but what they're doing is somehow hotter than anything he could have thought of. Has he ever just imagined how barely touching someone else while they all chase their own gratification together could feel like so much? Did he ever get off on the idea of lying there, the soft feeling of someone panting against his skin, contented in the middle of the frustrating delight of rising sensation? How long’s it been since he thought of sex as such a simple pleasure as this? 

Need passes between them like a current being transmitted. Vanessa, stopping to catch her breath with her fingertips falling to rest against Ruben’s thigh and he can feel that they’re wet. The realisation is a tug in his belly that he rolls up into, which makes Usnavi gasp and quietly mutter “fuck, Ruben, you’re hot as hell,” the kind of thing that Ruben could probably never say without sounding stupid but it sounds so right on Usnavi. it sounds right to have Vanessa cooing encouragement low-voiced while she rides her own fingers, telling him to come for them, the rasp in the vowels when she calls him _baby_ perfect on her. It even sounds right to hear his own voice, guttural groaning something between a moan and “_yeah”_, palm of his other hand pressed over the head as he spills out into slow satisfaction.

Vanessa kisses him immediately like it’s a reward for finishing, then falls against him with most of her weight to get off with her hand pressed between herself and Ruben’s thigh, her hip sliding against the damp patch on his belly. He lets her nip quick fierce kisses like stings against his mouth, replies with a gentle one between her eyebrows where she's holding a tight look of needy, almost furious focus to feel it ease out under his lips, and then holds her against him with both arms and one leg while he turns to Usnavi, who says “well, damn, I could watch that forever.”

Ruben could watch _this _forever. He takes in all the things he missed because of the position last night, Usnavi's faintly startled look of desire, the way Usnavi’s body fits itself with sharp angles and slender fingers. The way Usnavi touches himself, rolls the foreskin down to work the thumb under the head, grip tight while his other hand lightly dances elegant, over his chest then down to his balls with a gentle squeeze that makes him hum in pleasure,

“_Someone’s_ obviously had a lot of practice at that,” Ruben murmurs to Vanessa, who giggles into his shoulder.

“Hey, fuck you, pal,” Usnavi says breathily. “C’mere.”

Vanessa shifts her weight off his arm. Ruben reaches down to curl his fingers over the hand Usnavi’s jerking off with, moving it for him faster and faster until finally Usnavi makes a deep, resonant noise in the back of his throat and hides his face behind his arm, shuddering.

“Damn,” he sighs, wiping his hand off on the sheets. “Like, god_damn_. Good fuckin’ morning. Vanessa, where my lady at? Get here.”

“I got you, baby,” she says, holding out her arm to Usnavi. They cuddle each other with Ruben, between them and the most he's ever been touched his whole life til now, the same place he spent all night. He holds out in the happy glow as long as possible but some things you can only ignore for a certain amount of time, so he reluctantly says “I’m pretty sure you’re both going to be stuck to me forever if we don’t clean up soon.”

“On it,” Usnavi says, disentangling himself and taking a packet of baby wipes from the top drawer. “I always come prepared. Literally.”

“Thank god, else that could have been a _sticky _situation,” Ruben says. Usnavi does a finger-gun of approval.

“I’m cancelling this conversation,” Vanessa says. “Or you guys can carry on punning while I get first shower.”

“You’re not allowed first shower, you take forever,” Usnavi complains, flapping a baby wipe at her. “You want to shower here or waiting till you get home, Ruben?”

Oh. Right. Home. “What happens when I go home?” Ruben says quietly, instead of answering the question.

“I dunno, I’ll probably kick around til lunch then go take over at the store,” Usnavi says.

“No, I meant. What _happens_? We have to think about consequences now, don’t we?” Ruben cleans his fingers off one more time and crumples the wipe up in his fist. “Like, when I come into the store tomorrow, who am I talking to? Are you gonna be Usnavi who fucked me last night or Usnavi my friend at the bodega or Just Some Guy Who Makes My Coffee? Is this Vanessa who I’ve just watched, y'know, or Vanessa who I hang out with platonically or Coffee Guy’s Not-Coffee Girlfriend now?”

“Could be all three?” Usnavi suggests.

“I’m definitely not just The Not-Coffee Girlfriend, thanks,” Vanessa objects. Ruben makes an apologetic face at her, because that’s not how he meant it, and she inclines her head in acceptance. “All of them is good, though. Could be something else, too.”

“Like what?”

“Like…Usnavi and Vanessa who fucked you last night and wanna do it again some time. Regularly.”

“Usnavi and Vanessa who like this bit too, not just the sex,” Usnavi adds. “With the morning, and the hanging out, and the cuddling.”

“Could be like, Usnavi and Vanessa and Ruben, maybe,” Vanessa says, giving Ruben a look that on anyone else he would have called shy.

“Usnavi and Ruben and Vanessa,” Usnavi corrects her.

“What’s the difference?”

“Letters balance out nicer. Got the u- sounds on one side and the -en -an sounds on the other, and me and Vanessa make it esses at either end, and the vees are more evenly spaced. Trust me, I’m right. Hey, ain’t it awesome that we all have so many sounds in common? Like, it wouldn’t work at all if Ruben was called…fuckin’, Eric or something.”

“Usnavi and Eric and Vanessa?” Vanessa tests. “Wow, you're right, I _hate_ that. God, get your shit together, Eric.”

“Fuckin’ _Eric.”_

Ruben tosses the tissue over to the side table, too preoccupied to care about throwing it out properly or to join in with the patter. “To be clear, do you mean…dating?” he asks, feeling himself burn up with embarrassment like it's a totally unrealistic conclusion to come to. Dating. Ruben. Them. Should it seem less impossible considering what's all just happened? It doesn't seem less impossible.

“Maybe,” Vanessa says with a shrug. “Or like, whatever.”

“Don’t take Vanessa’s total inability to say anything genuine the wrong way, we totally mean dating,” Usnavi says. “Last night, all that, it wasn’t just out of the blue.”

Ruben raises a hand. “Beg to differ.”

Vanessa laughs. “Okay, I guess it was to you, even though I don’t know how you missed Usnavi walking round with hearts falling out of his eyeballs at you for the past however long.” She catches Ruben’s hand as he drops it back down and links her fingers through his. “We’ve already talked a _lot_ about what it means for mine and Usnavi’s relationship, and we agreed that we want this, if you do.”

“Vanessa, I don’t know _how_ to want this,” Ruben says quietly. “You have to understand, this is _so_ far beyond untrodden ground for me. This time a year ago I'd be having a fucking breakdown if anyone so much as looked at me and suddenly we've just...and I'm here, with all this," he holds out both his scarred arms. "And you've seen it and you've seen me and this is where you say you want it to go? You've talked about it but that doesn't mean it's the same when you live it, and I’ve never done this, nothing even close to it. Dating was hard enough for me before and now— I’m messed up, Vanessa. I don’t know how to be what you want me to be. I don't even know what that is.”

“We don’t want you to try and be nothin’,” Usnavi says. “Just, y’know, Ruben it up, that’s plenty good enough.”

“That’s new too,” Ruben murmurs. Habit says _you aren’t allowed this_. But _god_, Ruben’s never felt like this before, none of his failed dates or screwed-up crushes ever got close. That must mean something, right? And it’s so obvious how much Vanessa and Usnavi love each other, would they really risk that just for a quick fuck with the world’s most fucked-up guy? There’s way better options to spice up a sex life, and even Ruben’s paranoia can’t work itself into believing that it’s all some kind of long-con. He doesn't see any cracks in their kindness where cruelty hidden underneath pokes through, and besides, why bother, when he has nothing they want.

Except maybe himself, just him. That’s new. That’s new. That’s very new.

“It’s definitely not a no,” he decides, finally.

“¡Wepa!” Vanessa whoops. Usnavi drums his heels quickly against the bed in an excited beat.

“Hold on, that’s not a yes either,” Ruben reminds them, but the burst of _something_ he got just from their split-second of happiness - _Ruben _made them feel like that! - pretty much makes the end result inevitable, doesn’t it? And his name does sounds right, sitting right there in the middle of the other two Usnavi-Ruben-Vanessa, or any way he puts them together. “I guess it’s a _not yet_.”

“However long you need,” Vanessa says, beaming at him, a rare dorky grin like the one he saw last night. The tip of her tongue sticks out a little between her front teeth when she does it, and her face goes all squished up. Didn’t Ruben find her intimidating once? What the hell was he thinking? She’s _adorable_.

“No pressure at all,” Usnavi agrees. “Uh, in the least pressure way possible, just so I know where I stand vis-a-vis places I can put my face, is making out off the table during the _not yet? _Because I can _totally_ not get my tongue all up in you if you need space, but if you’re down then I for sure want to know.”

Hm. Kissing is good. Might bias the outcome of his consideration period? Might make everything even more confusing than it already is? Kissing is _very_ good, though. “Yeah. No, definitely you should feel free to get your tongue all up in me.”

“Sweet,” Usnavi says, and does exactly that.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: very brief mention of past suicidal feelings, but it's only a few sentences in passing.

Summertime weighs heavily through thick clothing and so it’s Ruben’s habit of waking up early that provides the best respite from the usual, walking the block when there’s something less used up about the air. It also provides him these moments with Usnavi, both of them with their hands around Ruben’s coffee cup at the same time because Usnavi is reluctant to move his away.

“You wanna drink these outside?” Ruben asks, once his coffee has been released to him. “It’s still cool out.”

They sit on the stoop that Ruben has been informed used to belong to Usnavi’s Abuela and Usnavi bumps the backs of their hands together; Ruben moves his so that they’re palm to palm with their fingers intertwined.

“You coming to Nina’s welcome home thing tonight?” Usnavi asks him. “She’s looking forward to meeting you.”  
  
“Not sure,” says Ruben. At this moment it sounds like fun, and not too much too handle - just dinner, and people who he already knows, apart from Nina - but it’s only morning, and there’s a lot that can change across a day.

“Okay,” says Usnavi agreeably, with a squeeze of Ruben’s hand, and then leaves it at that.  
  
It’s still unclear what the three of them are right now, though the uncertainty isn’t unpleasant. They slept together that night two weeks ago and fooled around the morning after, they said they liked him, then things skipped backwards to something more cautious and probably for the best. Ruben’s come too far to immediately leave his whole world balancing on the whim of two other people again. He’s a newcomer to a two year relationship and they all need some time to think.

But there’s also this: Usnavi tentatively touching his hand in the early morning when nobody can see, and Vanessa holding him by the hips as she moves past him, and slow, heated kisses with both of them at once in the backroom of the bodega. It’s just a _not yet._ Give him time to catch up to where his life is.

It doesn’t make sense that he’s only been here for five and a half months.

There’s a rupture in his internal calendar that begins around the time the Blackout stopped working, when things started going really wrong, when all the months get strange and blurred and twisted. There’s certain things that he can remember as facts without the attached memory of experience like a secondhand story, and others that are just pain without context like a TV with sound but no picture. There’s things out of order or lost forever, and he can never tell if parts of it seem like lifetimes ago or if it’s barely been a day since they happened. 

What will Ruben remember a year from now?

He draws a box around this as a fixed point, a specificity amidst the chaos: dawn in New York glows along the metal of the fire escapes the day Ruben turns twenty-nine, and there’s a breeze off the Hudson, and Usnavi is holding his hand.  
***

“We miss you being here, cariño,” his ma says while they’re Facetiming.  
  
Ruben says “I miss you all too, Ma,” because that’s true, and “I like it in the Heights,” because so is that.

“You really do, don’t you?” she says. “Then I am glad, but how will you spend your birthday without me there to cook for you? I hope you have plans.”  
  
“I’m still catching up on all the research journals-“ he starts, and she cuts him off with an exasperated noise.  
  
“Oh, that’s so like you. You mustn’t spend the day working. Get some air, see your friends!”  
  
“I already got some air today, Ma,” Ruben says. “I went and got coffee like always.”  
  
“Ah, yes, of course. Well, I suppose that counts. That Usnavi sounds like a good boy.”

Ruben’s smiling when he says “the best,” but he can tell she’s still searching his face trying to gauge how he’s doing, and he knows how she worries about him out here alone, which is what makes him add “and anyway, the Rosarios are doing a thing for their daughter later. I’ll see everyone at that.”

Even if he weren’t already thinking about going, it would’ve been worth it for how happy it makes his ma look.

  
***

His phone dings while he’s sat at his kitchen table with his laptop, deep in all the research he’s missed out on. It's something he’s been working his way through for a couple of months now, an endless reading list of things that changed while he wasn’t there to be involved in them or when his brain was too messed up to even comprehend them. It isn’t the pace he would've worked at once, but he's always been a hard worker so he lets himself take longer over the things he doesn't understand, staring at it from all angles till he finds one that he can see clearly at, trying not to miss those days when he was still a genius.

The message is from Vanessa, who’s started texting him at random points during the day because she says that not having Snapchat is no excuse to miss out on what’s going on. What’s going on right now is a selfie of her lying facedown on her work desk with an open copy of her company magazine draped over her head like a tiny, glossy roof. Ruben isn’t entirely sure what mood she’s trying to convey, so he just snaps a picture of himself facedown on the table with his notebook over his head and hopes that it’s the right answer. 

She sends back an incomprehensible string of emojis, but there’s three different colors of heart in there so probably he did good.

**Ruben:**  
i’m coming to nina’s thing tonight, i decided.  
  
**Vanessa:**  
!!!!  
you need help picking an outfit?  
  
**Ruben:**  
think i’ve got it handled. spoiler alert: it’s gonna be a sweater  
  
**Vanessa:**  
BUT IS IT THE ROYAL BLUE SWEATER OR THE NAVY BLUE SWEATER

**Ruben:  
**might even bust out the indigo one

**Vanessa:  
**jfc chill ruben its dinner at ninas not prom night

  
***

It hasn’t been any sort of sweater weather for weeks. Ruben only wears thin cotton t-shirts underneath to try and minimize the heat but there’s only so much he can do, so mostly he just makes sure to carry a bottle of water round with him, wears a lot of anti-perspirant and resigns himself to being perpetually sweaty anyway.

In his wardrobe there are five long-sleeved shirts, in plaid or stripes or dark block color, that have been hanging unworn for weeks waiting for the _some day_ that he keeps promising himself he’ll wear them. Logically, he knows his skin isn’t any more on display in one of those, but it seems different somehow. Through the thin material of a shirt he can run a hand up and down his arm and feel each of the intersecting ridges and bumps totally undisguised by a more substantial fabric. It feels like being exposed, even though the only people who would actually touch his arms have seen far more of him than that already.

Why not today?

There was a time when he used to have to take a shower with his clothes on. Tonight he’s standing in just a towel in front of his closet, and his hands are unmoving on a sweater while he’s looking at his reflection in the mirror in the back of the door. It only hurts a little to remember the way his body looked before, because it’s so hard to connect himself now with the man that he was when he wore it. This is Ruben now, forever. There’s a lot he learnt from Jason and Ian, lessons he’ll never be able to fully unlearn. There’s a lot he’s learning, slowly but undeniably, from Usnavi and Vanessa and everyone in the barrio.

The things Ruben has learnt from Ruben: how to move with the least pain when his whole upper body was stitches. How to keep going past the thing in his mind that started quietly observing all the substances and weapons and upper-floor windows everywhere he went, a mental catalogue of ways he could just make everything _stop_. How to keep going in general, eyes on the horizon even when it only takes a small misstep to lose half the ground he already covered.

He moves his hand to run it across the row of shirts up on their hangers. Why not today? Back to sweaters tomorrow maybe, but tonight he can do this.  
  
***

Camila greets him with “who’s _this_ handsome young man on my doorstep” when he knocks, fidgeting awkwardly with the cuffs of the dark blue shirt he finally settled on. He doesn’t know if it actually does look good or if she’s just being nice. Maybe he should’ve taken Vanessa up on her offer of fashion advice.

“Is that Ruben at the door stealing my wife’s affections?” asks Kevin. “Watch yourself, she is a taken woman, you know."

_Turns out that’s not necessarily a barrier_, Ruben thinks, and then tries really hard to unthink it in case anyone overhears his internal monologue. Daniela passes through the hallway on her way to the kitchen and wolf-whistles at him. He’s already feeling flushed and ridiculous by the time he finds who he’s looking for in the living room, talking to the one person in the room he doesn’t recognize.

“Hey, guys,” he says, slipping in to the edge of their small circle. Nina says a chirpy hi, introducing herself, and he smiles as warmly as he can when he gives his name in return. Hopefully she isn’t offended that he doesn’t lean in to shake her hand or do that odd stranger-hug or whatever the right thing to do when meeting new people is. He just _can’t._ Nina luckily didn’t look like she was moving in for any of those anyway, and only nods acknowledgement.

Usnavi and Vanessa have been worryingly silent as they look him over, sweaterless and self-conscious of it despite the fact they’ve seen him _naked_. Usnavi’s face is doing a disconcerting thing where his eyes are trying to to go big with shock and to crinkle up happily both at the same time, but with visible effort he holds back from commenting and just says “hey there.”

“Well, look at you all dressed up,” says Vanessa. “You even put a tie on. Or tried to, at least, did you get bored halfway through?”

Ruben looks down at the messy, loose knot and shrugs. Ties look better that way to him. “It’s on enough.”  
  
“You look good,” she reassures him. “You look really good.” Usnavi nods enthusiastically and there’s a moment where they all just look at each other for slightly too long, but Nina swoops in before it gets actually weird so at least someone in this conversation still has their shit together.

“Ruben,” she says. “I have heard _so_ much about you,” and Vanessa laughs at the added emphasis.

“Welcome to my fuckin’ life,” she says. “You’d think after this long Usnavi woulda run out of things to say, but nope, still all I get is _Ruben is so cool_ all day.”

Usnavi shrugs happily and doesn’t disagree.

“Jealousy’s an ugly colour,” says Ruben. “Do you want me to teach you how to be cool so Usnavi will like you too?”

“Usnavi’s not the only one I Facetime with, Vanessa,” Nina. “_I’d punch your **mom** if she upset him, Nina-”_

Vanessa makes an urgent shushing noise. Ruben is fucking _living_ for her face. “Are you _blushing_, Vanessa?” he teases.

“It’s warm in here,” she denies. “You shoulda stayed in California, Rosario, quit putting me on blast.”

Nina looks unrepentant. “And as if you’d have to fight my mom about him anyway. Heard about you from her, too,” she explains as an aside to Ruben. “I think she’s aiming all her undirected maternal urges your way now.”  
  
“My entire fridge is full of leftovers,” he agrees, trying to pretend this whole conversation hasn't made him kind of emotional. It’s still unbelievable that people talk about him nicely even when he’s not there to hear it. It’s still unbelievable that so many people seem to like him.

“I think she’d have followed me to Stanford to make sure I was taking care of myself otherwise, I probably owe you for taking some of the heat off,” Nina says.

“Eh, sounds like you’re stuck listening to The Ruben Show broadcasting on all frequencies, how about we call it quits?”

“Deal. Hey, so you’re gonna be a teacher, right? Which college are you working at?”

They fall into easy academia chat, with Usnavi and Vanessa getting bored and talking between themselves just to the side, and Ruben manages to muddle his way through that and then dinner without tripping over his words or crying or forgetting how to breathe, so he thinks he’s doing well.  
  
Once the food’s out of the way, everyone starts drinking and things get louder. Ruben’s too warm from his single glass of wine and the body heat of too many people in a small space. All the threads of surrounding voices overlap into a confused tangle, not helped by the fact that stories keep going round which have evidently been retold so many times that the details are no longer considered necessary.

It’s a little overwhelming, and Ruben keeps getting lost trying to follow all these parts of the barrio’s half-explained history, so he excuses himself from talking with Benny and Carla to step out onto the fire escape and re-center a little. Vanessa catches his eye on the way out and mouths _you okay? _He nods and holds up a hand like _back in five minutes_. She turns to say something to Usnavi, who leans round like he’s making sure Ruben’s there before flashing him a thumbs-up and turning back to talk to Camila again.

Out in the warm summer nighttime, Ruben tunes the sounds out to count his breaths slow and steady, more from habit than necessity. It’s almost been five minutes when a soft voice says, “good view, right?”

Nina is smiling up at him from the window. “You up for company?”  
  
Ruben waves her over and she climbs out and comes to stand near him, resting her crossed arms on the railing in front of her and looking out over the city.

“Everything okay?” she asks lightly.  
  
“All good,” he assures her. “Just wanted a moment to think.”

Nina nods understandingly. “When I was a kid I didn’t think anyone would ever have a better view than this in the whole world,” she tells him. “I was always up here surrounded by notebooks, making plans about where I’d go to school and what I’d study and all the places I’d go and see and the kind of person I’d become. I think I scheduled in every single moment of the first thirty years of my life sat on this fire escape.”

There was a little part of Ruben’s brain that always thought he would’ve made scientific history by now. A Nobel prize or something. He’s lost almost seven years. Almost a quarter of his life. “And was it what you imagined? School. Or California. Or yourself.”  
  
She studies him. She’s got a shrewd stare, Nina does, he can see things moving quickly, but she keeps whatever thoughts are ticking away to herself.

“No,” she answers eventually, and she doesn’t sound disappointed about it. “Not really. How about you?”  
  
Ruben looks out to the GWB while music and voices drift from inside. It’s not a party _for_ him, but it’s his birthday, and if he listens close enough he can pick out Usnavi’s laugh from the rest of the noise, can almost picture Vanessa’s smirk as she whispers in Usnavi’s ear. He touches his own arm through the fabric of his shirt.

“Not even a little bit,” he says. “Let’s go back in? You don’t wanna miss your own night.”

It’s been a concerted effort to not spend the whole evening with one eye on Usnavi and Vanessa, trying not to be too obvious about the thing between the three of them, though all night he’s been wanting so much to hold both their hands. There's already enough gossip about them, they don’t need the entire barrio having a thousand and one more thoughts about their three-sided little diagram when the only thing they’re even sure of themselves is that they like each other a lot.

But Ruben can’t help the look he feels rising on his face when he sees them standing just like he’d pictured them, Vanessa talking quiet and close to Usnavi as he laughs. And when Ruben walks over to them Usnavi presses their shoulders together for a second too long for it to count as a bump, Vanessa fixes the collar of Ruben’s shirt absent-mindedly with lingering fingers, and Nina Rosario with her sharp sharp eyes is standing right next to him and she seems like the kinda girl to pay attention to details.

“I’m…gonna go find Benny,” she says, not hanging around for their response. Ruben waits till she’s out of hearing range before he turns back to the other two.

“Come round mine after?” he asks. “I-if you want to?”

Usnavi says “yes!” with immediate enthusiasm and Vanessa says “private afterparty? I knew you were on my level, Marcado,” and Ruben’s pretty sure you don’t need to be as observant as Nina to read any of their faces right now.

***

They don’t stay much longer after that. When Vanessa says “we’re gonna call it a night, guys,” both Usnavi and Ruben stand to follow her without even thinking how it’ll look, and the fact that nobody commented on all three of them blatantly leaving together is a concern they can deal with later when they’re not distracted by nervous anticipation. It’s almost silent on the short walk back to Ruben’s place, and once the door is shut behind them nobody quite seems willing to make any sort of move. They loiter in the hallway uncertainly, and the other two turn to look at him.

Oh. They’re waiting for him to call the shots.

“I didn’t celebrate my birthday last year,” he tells them, letting the words spill out fast before he has time to overthink them. “I mean, my mom made dinner, but I spent half the night throwing it up. I’d only been home a couple months, only been in therapy for a few weeks. I couldn’t even go outside by myself, I could barely get dressed in the morning. Ma kept saying _I thought we’d never get to see another birthday_ and I kept thinking, _what’s to celebrate? There isn’t much of me left._”

They both start to say something but he shushes them. He didn’t bring them here to have a long, depressing backstory talk, he just needed it off his mind before he can deal with what’s next.

It feels like he wakes up nine or ten times a day now, blinking into awareness through the routine while he’s reading a journal or showering or in line to buy groceries and realizing that he’s _here_. All this stuff is happening to someone who is _him_. His actions are his own. He keeps realizing how long it’s been since he wished Ian had just killed him. There’s still so much to do, but he knows that he’s alive.

Mostly, Ruben didn't say anything about today because he didn’t actually know how to celebrate a thing so strange and fragile until he was standing on the fire escape at Nina’s, but an added bonus is Usnavi’s face when Ruben says “hard to believe how much things can change in a year.” Vanessa looks surprised, but Usnavi looks utterly dismayed.  
  
“Wait, is this a real ass-backwardsy way of saying today’s your birthday?" he asks. “But Ruben, we didn’t do nothin' for it!”  
  
“We were at a party with everyone we know all evening,” Ruben points out. “That’s the most birthday thing we could do.”  
  
“Not when it’s _someone else’s_ party! We woulda done something for _you_. Okay, we’re gettin' dinner tomorrow, we can’t just -”

“Usnavi,” Ruben interrupts, leaning in till he’s close enough that the movement of his mouth is the suggestion of a kiss, in a move he’s shamelessly ripped off of Vanessa. He’s less graceful in his own skin than she is, he’ll never move that smooth, but Usnavi’s face goes gratifyingly glazed over anyway. “It’s still my birthday.”

He pulls back just as Usnavi tries to lean in and catch a real kiss, trying not to look too outwardly smug that he mostly pulled that off.  
  
“I hate it that you taught him that,” Usnavi says to Vanessa, but his face is glowing with two patches of bright, excited pink on his cheeks. She ignores him and twists her hand in Ruben’s tie with a smile, gently tugging him closer.

“Happy birthday, Ruben,” she says. As Ruben rises up on his toes to kiss her, Usnavi brings his arms round his waist and says “Happy birthday, Ruben,” and it’s a feeling like waking up to realize that this is happening to _him_.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments make me extremely happy and encourage me to write more!  
Come say hi to me on [tumblr](https://thisstableground.tumblr.com/)!


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